Marx and the four-hundred metres' contour line: regional responses to the French Revolution in rural Piedmont

Abstract

The French Revolution of 1789, and the subsequent period of warfare and unrest, were interpreted in a bewildering variety of ways by contemporary observers, both inside France and throughout the rest of Europe. In the years following 1789, a complex and shifting pattern of political allegiances emerged across the continent as each village, town and region developed its own response to these dramatic events, based on particular historical, cultural and economic experience. In Piedmont, the heartland of the Kingdom of Sardinia in north-west Italy under the suzerainty of the Royal House of Savoy, the Revolution had a particular influence. French revolutionary armies invaded the region in 1796 and, except for a short period in 1799–1800, the country was under French rule until the collapse of the Napoleonic First Empire in 1814. This complex area, ranging from the high Alpine peaks of the north, through the rugged upland regions of the Apennines in the south, to the fertile lowlands of the Po valley in the east, was in the midst of a major agrarian upheaval when the Revolution broke out. The unrest caused by this agricultural re-structuring took on a new dimension during the subsequent period of French occupation. The ensuing conflict and violence was regionally-specific, afficting the upland areas of the Apennines and the Alps in particular. The persistent opposition to the French in these valleys was sustained by collective historical experience, reinforced by the environmental conditions and accentuated by socio-economic changes.